Sesame lock follows the same basic idea as August and other smart locks. You attach it to the lock on the inside of your door and, when in range, pull out your smartphone to quickly get inside. There’s also an accelerometer inside that can open up when it detects a unique knock pattern, a convenient (though not terribly safe) entry method. Sesame’s creators claim their product (now on Kickstarter aiming for a funding goal of $100,000) is superior to August in numerous ways. First, the setup process is basically instant. Whereas August comes with an installation kit, Sesame is attached to your existing deadbolt using a strip of 3M adhesive — and that’s it. Candy House, the company behind Sesame, says that a patent-pending, self-adjusting design allows the smart lock to adapt to nearly any deadbolt you’d find in the US.

Like August, the actual unlocking process uses Bluetooth, and Sesame lock has its own companion smartphone app for keeping track of who’s come and gone or giving your friends remote access. To get the most out of the deal, you’ll need a separate Wi-Fi access point to keep Sesame connected to the internet at all times. That’s the only way you’ll be able to check if the door’s locked when away from home, for instance. Sesame’s founders claim it makes the link to your smartphone in just one second versus the “7 seconds” they’ve clocked August at. They believe Sesame has superior battery life (500 days) and point to its cheaper price ($89 for the lock itself, or $139 with the Wi-Fi dongle) as the obvious selling point.

Sesame lock does seem to cross off some of the complaints and hassles that people have experienced with the August lock. But then again, August is a real product right now, and Sesame needs to rally smart home enthusiasts to execute on its vision. Plenty of questions remain about how it will all come together. If successful, Sesame will start shipping units out to Kickstarter backers in late April.

This is an interview with Noemie Goudal at the 2015 Armory show in New York city.

Inspired by her travels, the old-school titans of black-and-white photography such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, and the novels of Haruki Murakami, photographer Noemie Goudal creates images that occupy a space between surrealistic fantasy and modern life. Having once written stories to inspire her photographs, Goudal is now drawn to abandoned and obsolete structures and locations around the world, such as brutalist buildings and dilapidated barns, which she photographs before Photoshopping them into idiosyncratic environments and often enlarging them into life-size prints. She uses traditional chromogenic Lambda printing, adding a nostalgic element to compositions that are at once stark, romantic, and uncanny.

The Armory Show, a leading international contemporary and modern art fair and one of the most important annual art events in New York, takes place every March on Piers 92 & 94 in central Manhattan. The Armory Show is devoted to showcasing the most important artworks of the 20th and 21st centuries. In its sixteen years the fair has become an international institution, combining a selection of the world’s leading galleries with an exceptional program of arts events and exhibitions throughout New York during the celebrated Armory Arts Week.

This is an interview with Rachael Champion at the 2015 Armory show in New York city.

The Armory Show, a leading international contemporary and modern art fair and one of the most important annual art events in New York, takes place every March on Piers 92 & 94 in central Manhattan. The Armory Show is devoted to showcasing the most important artworks of the 20th and 21st centuries. In its sixteen years the fair has become an international institution, combining a selection of the world’s leading galleries with an exceptional program of arts events and exhibitions throughout New York during the celebrated Armory Arts Week.

This is an interview with Brian Bress at the 2015 Armory show in new york city.

The Armory Show, a leading international contemporary and modern art fair and one of the most important annual art events in New York, takes place every March on Piers 92 & 94 in central Manhattan. The Armory Show is devoted to showcasing the most important artworks of the 20th and 21st centuries. In its sixteen years the fair has become an international institution, combining a selection of the world’s leading galleries with an exceptional program of arts events and exhibitions throughout New York during the celebrated Armory Arts Week.

Will Kurtz was born in Flint, Michigan and received his Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from Michigan State University in 1981. He practiced as a landscape architect for 25 years, throughout the United States and Canada. It wasn’t until he was in his mid thirties that he began creating art as a self-taught artist. Eventually his passion for art superseded landscape architecture and he moved to New York at the age of 50 to attend graduate school at the New York Academy of Art. After graduation with an MFA he was selected to remain and do a one-year fellowship. He has since had several solo and group shows and has been reptresented by several galleries including Mike Weiss Gallery, New York, Queene Anne Galerie, Leipzig, Germany, Converge Gallery, PN and Stricoff Gallery, NY. His work is in many prominent collections around the world.

When it comes to parenting, you are your children’s idol, don’t disappoint them. And when you do (which you will), admit it to them. Apologize.

Make time for your kids. Read with them, play with them, color with them. It doesn’t matter what you do with them – as long as you spend time with them.
Hug them often, and tell them you love them. Look them in the eyes when you do.

Listen to your kids. Just, …listen!

By the way: your children will instinctively, subconsciously, and uncontrollably seek out a relationship identical to the one that you have with your spouse – remember that!

Facebook: get out of the habit of scrolling endlessly through your news-feed. If you must have an account (yes, I know – there are lots of good reasons to do so), then train yourself to check only your notifications and then get out. Otherwise you’ll scroll your day away. To resist the urge of scrolling to see what your friends are up to: pick a handful of good friends, if you like – and choose to “get notifications” for their activity.

If you don’t LOVE your job, then you don’t have the right job. If you do what you love, then you’ll never work a day in your life.

Do not answer calls/texts during dinner time, family time, or “you” time. Your cell phone is for YOUR convenience, not the caller’s.

Always remember – every person you come in contact with (every single day) is in the midst of some kind of personal struggle.

Always remember – what other people think about you is none of your business.

Always make eye-contact when speaking to someone, or when they are speaking to you.

Most of the time, in the heat of arguing, it’s in our human nature to try to always win an argument, being completely rational or irrational. Same things happens to most of us on relationship discussions. In my case: My girlfriend is Chinese, I’m Ecuadorian, so the cultural differences do make an impact on our peace. Quite often. So how is it best to save a relationship when the going gets tough?

I came up with the idea of sitting (or standing) leaning my back against my GF’s back whenever a discussion heats up and we need to resolve a dispute over something.

By doing this back-against-back thing, you continue the discussion as if you were still arguing face to face. After a couple of minutes, this ALWAYS helps us to end the discussion and have a really happy outcome. We have learned so much about ourselves and each other by doing this.

What happens is that the arguing becomes significantly more objective. You no longer have another person in front of you that you’re trying to rationalize, apologize, persuade or convince about something, instead, you’re more vulnerable because you’re talking to nobody in front of you. Your voice resonates and you can pretty much listen to your own voice and think, “Well, I do have a point!” or maybe, “Damn, I’m full of shit, this is wrong. I am wrong.”

It used to take a couple of minutes to end the discussion for good. At the end, when you turn around, you get to face the person that you just agreed with. It’s a moment where you go ‘ah.. There she is…’ Or ‘there he is…’ And realize how beautiful a peaceful moment feels.

It’s a little thing that changed our relationship, and in some cases even saved it.

1) Dumping the ‘Nice Guy’: She is right to do so. The reason is that most of these ‘nice guys’ are NOT nice because they want to be nice, or because they are nice. They are nice, first because of FEAR of dissatisfying, bothering or displeasing the woman. Second, because of the NEED to achieve their desired aim: make out, have sex or start a relationship with the woman. So here you have it: a combination of a coward who is NEEDY. This is the ugliest and most pathetic form of character, who would turn off the most desperate of women. Heck, even I would wanna avoid such a guy. He’s got no balls and he’s all about pleasing people. Like a mobile charity organization. Eww.

2) Going with the as*hole: I will not defend that. Women who dump the nice guy and go after as*holes are stupid and immature. The notion that “assholes are exciting” and “assholes are a challenge” is even more stupid. Just because he is ‘more exciting’ it does not mean he is good for a healthy relationship. He may not even be good for friendship. And giving him more attention and affection that other ‘non-as*holic’ guys only pulls her down to his level.

That being said, what you need to do is be fair with women. Any woman. Be fair to her and yourself. If she looks good, compliment her as much. But she needs to look VERY good to deserve it. If she says something stupid, face her with it. If she does a mistake, corner her with it. Take a stand. Show her you’re pissed just like you show her you’re happy to see her. If she’s playing hard to get, play harder. If she doesn’t spare time for you, do NOT spare time for her. Move on. There are plenty of women out there who may deserve the time and effort you’re gonna give. Always remember there are tons of other guys approaching her everyday. What’s gonna make you different? Being genuine.
-N. Houella

A research team at the Robotics and Intelligent Systems laboratory at the University of Oslo’s Department of Informatics is in the process of designing and programming 3D printed robots that can solve complex tasks in situations where humans cannot be present — for instance, in oslohazardous landslide areas, compromised nuclear power plants, or deep mines on faraway planets.

The robotics team has designed three generations of self-learning and self-repairing robots. The first robot, a “chicken robot” the team referred to as “Henriette,” taught itself to walk and leap over obstacles. When Henriette lost a leg, it learned without help from its designers and programmers to move about on the one remaining leg.

The second generation of self-learning robots, developed by masters student Tønnes Nygaard, was designed based on a simulation program that calculated what the robot’s body should look like — for instance, how many legs it should have, how long they would be, and what the robot 4 legdistance between them would be. Basically, the robot designed itself.

The third and most flexible generation thus far was design fully by the simulation program, which suggested the ideal number of legs and joints for the completed, self-learning and self-repairing robot. According to Associate Professor Kyrre Glette, the process works as follows: “We tell the simulation program what we would like the robot to do, how fast it should walk, its size and energy consumption.” The program runs through thousands of possible configurations and arrives at the best models in a process of artificial evolution.

As the team progressed through the three generations of design, the process became more complicated as they wanted the robots to perform increasingly more complex tasks. The robots, which were all produced via 3D printing, are tested for functionality. The team discovered during the tests, however, that the robots’ “real-world functionalities quite often prove[d] to be different from those of the simulated versions,” as Professor Mats Høvin, another team member, noted.

Closing the gap between the robots’ capacity to learn and practice at the simulation program stage and the real world is currently the challenge of the robotics team. One challenge they’ve given their robots is to test how they confront obstacles as, ideally, one of the primary functions of the self-learning and self-repairing robot will be to respond on its own to unforeseen problems. For example, one scenario the team provided was this: the robot enters the compromised nuclear power plant and encounters a staircase that had not been expected. It responds by taking a photograph of the staircase, analysing the photograph, and then, equipped with its own printer, printing and installing a part that will allow it to navigate the staircase.

robotIn another scenario, a self-learning, self-repairing robot sent into a deep mine on a distant planet would, for example, need to have the capacity to navigate over uneven terrain, climb boulders, and change direction when necessary. As it encountered problems, it would analyze the situation and respond by possibly adding necessary parts — for instance, augmenting its two- or four-legged design and adding another pair of legs that would allow it to crawl crab-like across a rugged surface (as seen in the video).

3D printing is invaluable both in creating the original models of the robots and in its role as an on-board tool for self-enhancing and -repairing in scenarios like the one cited above. “A 3D printer,” elaborates Høvin, “will construct whatever you want it to, layer by layer. This means you won’t have to bother with molds, and you can produce seemingly impossibly complicated structures as a single piece.”

The University of Oslo uses 3D printers that cost between 400,000 NOK (Norwegian Krone, or around $58,000 USD) and 3,000,000 NOK (or about $440,000 USD). As a general rule, of course, the more expensive the printer, the more sophisticated and the better the detail. It isn’t clear at this stage of the research and prototyping what caliber of 3D printer the self-learning, self-repairing robots will utilize.

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